Presidential Debate #3

This morning, Austin and I watched the third presidential debate. This debate topic was foreign policy and was mediated by Bob Schieffer.

Following are some of Austin's observations:

1. Romney describes Russia as a geopolitical foe. This led us to look up the definition of geopolitics: "a combination of political and geographic factors relating to something." Austin feels that labelling Russia as a geopolitical foe is not a very good way of making them an ally.

2. Austin thought the funniest part of the debate was when Obama responded to Romney's accusation that navy spending was too low ("our Navy is smaller now than any time since 1917 ... The Navy said they needed 313 ships to carry out their mission. We’re now down to 285. We’re headed down to the — to the low 200s if we go through with sequestration..."). Obama: "Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets (laughter)... We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines." This was a bit condescending of Obama, but Austin found it humorous. And, according to the transcript, so did the audience, who had taken a vow of silence (oops!).

We looked up the meaning of sequestration: "The action of taking legal possession of assets until a debt has been paid or other claims have been met."

3. Austin thought Romney said, "When I'm President of the United States," too often, as though it's going to happen.

4. Romney stated, "Well, my strategy’s pretty straightforward, which is to go after the bad guys, to make sure we do our very best to interrupt them, to — to kill them, to take them out of the picture." Austin: "He doesn't know who the bad guys are."

5. Austin feels that Obama could have done better. He spent too much effort focussing on Romney.

6. An example of China not playing by the trade rules (Romney): "I was with one company that makes valves in — in process industries. And they said, look, we were — we were having some valves coming in that — that were broken, and we had to repair them under warranty. And we looked them up, and — and they had our serial number on them. And then we noticed that — that there was more than one with that same serial number. They were counterfeit products being made overseas with the same serial number as a U.S. company, the same packaging. These were being sold into our market and around the world as if they were made by the U.S. competitor."

Austin: "This is proof of how bad China's trade practices are."

I mentioned FIPA to Austin, with a brief description of the Canada-China trade agreement set to be put into place this Halloween. Austin's response: "Really bad idea."